Inbound Account Based Marketing (ABM): 7 Steps to Success

What is Account-Based Marketing?

ABM in its simplest terms is approaching a target organisation as a market of one, whether you’re doing sales, B2B Telemarketing or Inbound Marketing.

Instead of one offer to each of many clients, you will aim to sell different services or solutions throughout a single client organisation, doing business with each segment, be they branches, divisions, or companies within a group.

Why Focus on Account-Based Marketing? By approaching each target organisation as a discrete campaign, this approach develops a wider, all-encompassing relationship within a company and allows you to uncover a greater range of sales potential from one source.

Add to that the lower chance of losing that potential customer if you lose your champion on the inside - a risk made ever greater by the approaching deadline for the new GDPR law. By having more opted-in contacts inside a company, you increase the longevity of your legal contact with them. When you have a broad range of contacts, one of them leaving becomes an opportunity to spread the word about you to their new employer.

• Inbound Account Based Marketing (ABM) This does not just apply to your approach to front-line sales either; by applying this methodology to your Inbound Marketing lead nurture process you can uncover further opportunities from other business areas within a client organisation or group.

In short Inbound ABM allows you to:

• Increase sales and revenue

• Retain big name clients

• Spread brand awareness

More and more businesses are starting to realise that Inbound Account Based Marketing and sales is a key component to increasing revenue per customer and achieving greater stability in your existing customer base.

So, you need to target multiple contacts, at varying levels, across a company, organisation or group. When applied to B2B telemarketing, this approach requires solid processes, experience and political savvy. ABM can be an important component of your Inbound Lead Generation Strategy if you’re targeting larger organisations. Here a few tips:

To adopt this methodology into your Inbound Sales process, follow these simple steps:

1. Identify and Research

Target organisations that are a good fit for your business. At this stage, you need to consider the full impact of having them as a client.

Do they already spend enough money on your type of solution to be worth a dedicated campaign? If they do not, are you still prepared to spend resources to acquire them? This could well be the case if they are a prestige brand in a vertical you are targeting; their logo on your website and their recommendation may cover the investment in this process over time.

Can you provide everything they might be looking for? Larger organisations may expect you to have significant resources. And don’t forget the acquisition process; some tenders can cost a lot of money to win. On that topic, check to see if they have any procurement prerequisites. You need to ensure that you can meet those before trying to win their business.

Read all you can about their plans, blogs, trade paper interviews, expo videos, anywhere. Not just what their sales and expansion plans are but also their ethics and business approach; are they a good fit?

2. Network and Expand Contacts

Talk to your sales teams. Have them call existing contacts and leverage relationships to get introductions. Find out what they can about the buying process across the rest of the organisation, and to get heads up on upcoming strategy changes or expansions. In fact, talk to everyone in your company – you might be surprised at who they know!

Listen to your customers, act on any information, and feed it all into your single view of this account. What may be irrelevant to one sales team could be vital to another.

Get online and use whatever tools you have. LinkedIn is a great place to start, to find as many meaningful contacts as you can. Even contacts outside of your normal parameters - a CMO might not be the decision maker on a piece of cybersecurity software but they do know the CIO and CTO, and may well refer you if impressed with the right content.

Acquire up to date, targeted data from someone who understands ABM and Inbound.

3. Create Unique Offers

Whether this is an existing client you are looking to expand, or a new prospect, an Inbound Account Based Marketing campaign is best served by some kind of door opening offer. This could be as little as a free white paper, right up to a trial of software or an audit of current capabilities, but it should resonate strongly with what you uncovered in the previous stages.

4. Create Content Specific to Targets

As mentioned earlier, ABM is all about approaching a target as a market of one. The campaign should be no different. You need to have a content strategy the reaches the right person, with the right style at the right time.

With Inbound ABM, it is more important than ever that the content across the campaign be complementary. It could easily be shared to others within the organisation at different stages. So while the way your story is told should vary to match the audience, it cannot be contradictory.

5. Deliver content to the right people at the right time

As ever with Inbound Marketing, this is the key. If you’ve completed the previous stages, then you understand who you are talking to and exactly how they fit into the decision making process. Your Buyer’s Journey is essential here. You should very quickly have an insight into the likely time frame of any future business, and your delivery should be timed to best capitalise on their process.

If this is an existing client, then make sure that you leverage your previous work as you navigate the organisation. For example, when approaching a new area of a group, make immediate use of case studies from work you have done with other people in that organisation (their colleagues).

6. Personalise

As well as having Landing Pages dedicated to an offer or buyer type, you should have sections of your site personalised for this account, that can only be accessed via links found on emails and content.

One important aspect of ABM is ensuring that any single contact knows you deal with the whole organisation. Seeing their logo on your web pages will reinforce that message.

7. Anlayse. Refine. Repeat.

Use metrics and experiential feedback to learn what works and what doesn’t. Feed this back into the early stages of content creation. Share the knowledge with your sales and marketing teams and apply it to future campaigns. Re-use content that works.

Looking for ways to refine your Inbound Strategy? Click the link below to download our free Ultimate Checklist For Attracting Leads Online.